2024 ReFED Food Waste Solutions Summit

With previous positions as a climate modeler, hydrologist, and agronomist for state and federal agencies, Pat’s diverse career path has a singular focus of ensuring food and water availability for future generations. He founded Chapul in 2012 as a way to create market pull-through demand for the growth of the insect agriculture industry. This path led him to an appearance on ABC’s Shark Tank, securing an investment from Mark Cuban, and the creation of a brand that reached national distribution as the first of its kind. He has expanded the mission to Chapul Farms’ which is at the forefront of building the infrastructure for insect agriculture as a platform for food waste reduction, soil health regeneration, and more sustainable agricultural inputs, all guided by the mission of increasing biodiversity in agriculture. In addition to Chapul, Pat sits on the Board of Tainable Regenerative Agriculture Laboratory, and is Chairman of the Board for the National Science Foundation's Industry University collaborative research center: The Center for Environmental Sustainability Through Insect Farming currently discovering entirely new galaxies of beneficial microbial ecosystems.